As a current mobile terminal has increasingly powerful functions and supports more functions, one mobile terminal can run multiple operating systems. However, the mobile terminal can be exclusively used by only one operating system at a time. Therefore, a current operating system switching manner is a multi-system cold switching. That is, only one operating system can be started at a time, and if another operating system needs to be switched to, the mobile terminal needs to be restarted. If multiple operating systems can be simultaneously started, and quick hot-switching can be performed between two operating systems, value and user experience of the multiple operating systems can be improved to a new level, and more users can be attracted.
One mobile terminal has only one set of hardware resources. The hardware resources are hardware resources in the mobile terminal that are used for external interaction, such as a display screen, audio and video, BLUETOOTH, WI-FI, a Global Positioning System (GPS), a Universal Serial Bus (USB), and a secure digital (SD) card. Currently, in a mobile terminal running multiple operating systems, a case in which the multiple operating systems simultaneously use a same hardware resource frequently occurs, which causes abnormal use of or even damage to the hardware resource. In other approaches, mutually exclusive access to and coordinated use of a hardware resource in a mobile terminal cannot be implemented among multiple operating systems.